Normal Life
by Taiha
Summary: In a world of princesses and their princes, of wizards and poisoned apples, and of sparrows with tiny miracles chained to their feet, can there be such a thing? ---RukaKanae short.


Just a little ficlet I wrote up while bored in accounting class. It's crack and I love it.

My writing, on the other hand, makes me feel like a dumbass.

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Normal Life

_For now, I think I'll just enjoy the carefree student life. _

When he returns to the spot where he and Juri had once sat, watching the sunset's last rays reflect across the water's still, metallic surface, he finds someone else sitting there on that single, unassuming white bench, seated a safe distance from the precipice. She holds herself loosely with the tired carelessness that is only used when one feels that they are truly alone. He is too far away to tell the exact hue, but the hair that spills over and obscures the top of the familiar, wrought-iron rose pattern is light and her dress an earthy brushstroke against the more vivid yellows and oranges of the water.

He is too far away to be sure that she is crying. All he can make out are tiny bursts of light sparkling against the smooth curve of her cheek. It may just be her eyes; shining the way Juri's used to. The evening is unusually bright, after all.

He walks up slowly, his loud footsteps and pace giving the young woman (for her age is better discerned in the closer proximity, and he pegs her for senior like himself, although he has no recollections of ever sharing a class with her or noticing her amidst the throng of other girls crowding any of the hallways) ample time to compose herself. She gives him a small smile before he sits down. He asks her name but does not remember it after she tells him. What he does remember is the soft, formal airs within her voice. Their cadence wanting to not to please but to simply show a polite level of happiness, with a more solid inflection shaping the edges. Whoever she is, it is her place and title that are important, not herself.

As they make small talk, he can tell that she knows this. Her voice and dignified words are honest enough, as are his, and they speak of loneliness, of neglect, of one too long kept in company but never being anything more than a topic, a vase of ornamental lilies with white plastic petals. Conversations are held around her, for her, _at_ her, but not often enough intimately _with_ her. He sees the light reflecting in her dark eyes; stars amidst nothingness. A breeze picks up, taking the end of her long white scarf with it, and he contents himself watching it bend and swirl, furl and unfurl, in its invisible grasp.

She says sometimes she just wants a normal life, a life of openness and soft touches, a life of chance meetings and expectation for the unknown. A life in which petty feelings and nonsensical comforts do not require appointments; a life built of her own mistakes with a future wide enough to envision and experience the consequences.

He nods to show that he agrees with her. He does not need to show further acknowledgement to let her know that he agrees with what she does not say as well. The heavy, internalized imperative that lies behind her words and governs their simplicity, binding even her most intimate of thoughts.

They cannot have normal lives.

She is engaged. To the proxy-chairman, no less.

And he, he has so little time.

Maybe not even enough time to share one last conversation with Juri here, in their special place, sitting side-by-side and exchanging more snide remarks then meaningful glances. Certainly not enough time to enjoy one last spar free from malice and hidden intent, one in which the metal of their clashing swords mirror her elegant copper hair falling about her face in dignified curls, him guiding those graceful movements and imagining the day when she would finally, truly, shine.

No. It just isn't going to turn out that way. It's not really supposed to.

But he has more than enough time, he knows, to make this woman happy, before she returns to a different self and a different life, and he to his. To give her one breath of freedom and rebellion. He can give her a warm body and a caring touch, and he can give her a choice to make. A single, small comfort.

He smiles as if any of this matters.

He should be thinking of other things. A small pair of hands clasping a sword that was not his, but not unfamiliar to him, either. Earnest and unpracticed confessions of love and devotion that try so hard to convince the one who speaks them that they are true. Wine-colored eyes whose gaze never quite returns his own. Balconies, trees, and the shadows that they cast.

Their lips meet, and their bodies follow suit; delicate hands clinging desperately to his uniform, working their way down what seems an endless row of buttons. Lightly calloused fingertips in turn running through and smoothing hair that he now realizes is a delicate and subtle shade of almost impossibly pale green.

Chaos is normalcy for them both, and they bathe in it together for what are only fleeting seconds compared to the vastness of the skies and the world outside this place that seems to no longer belong to anyone.

From the corner of his eyes he watches her scarf fly off, from a sweep of his arm or from a sudden breeze, he does not know, and tumble with a fluid motion as light and insubstantial as smoke across the ground, landing silently against stone.

As the wind continues to toy with its edges, he has time to wonder, briefly, before the taste and smell of decadent vanilla possesses him, if this is living what a normal life was, or if this is simply living a part of hers.

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Review if you think KANAE NEEDS MORE LOVIN'!


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